Addiction - Choice?

Addiction is everywhere.  While psychological dependencies of the mind are primarily associated with physical dependencies of substances such as drugs and alcohol, they also include uncontrollable behaviors relating to gambling, self-mutilation, overeating, cosmetic surgery, the internet, and just about anything else.  What I want to focus on is addiction as it relates to drugs and alcohol.

A Harvard psychologist, Gene Heyman, has written a book that is causing quite a stir in the world of addiction treatment.  In , “Addiction: A Disorder of Choice”, Heyman argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, addiction is not a disease, but rather a lack of individual self-control, an inability to take a long term perspective.  Not a disease, but a choice.  Wow! If this is true, it should throw a large wrench into the workings of a whole host of treatment programs and health-care policies.

Science appeared to have supported the view that addiction was a disease.  Neuroscience showed that the brains of addicts were uniformly abnormal.  Surely, this was evidence that addicts were just unfortunate souls, victims to the same sort of life lottery that claimed other victims of other diseases.  The uncontrollable behaviors of addicts had to be viewed sympathetically because these behaviors were beyond the influence of rewards, punishments and societal expectations.  But were the poor choices of addicts coming from their brain abnormalities or were the brain abnormalities coming from the poor choices?  For Heyman, the disease model of addiction just wasn’t adding up.  Why were addicts that never entered treatment programs more successful in achieving sobriety than addicts that went through treatment programs?  Why did 70 - 90% of addicts going through standard treatment programs, relapse within the first year of completing treatment?  Why did some treatment programs, such as those for airline pilots, which threatened job termination if the pilots were unsuccessful in their recovery, have success rates of over 80%.  For Heyman, the explanation for the poor success rate of treatment centers, came from research that showed that many of these addicts also suffered from other mental disorders.  As Heyman delved into the case histories of recovered addicts, the common thread for recovery was some cataclysmic event that ultimately led them to make the choice to quit their addiction.  Whether it was a car crash, a DUI charge, or their spouse leaving them, something occurred that made the addict realize they could no longer sacrifice the long term for their short term pleasure.

Heyman’s book reminded me of a Stanford University study involving marshmallows, four-year-olds, and choice.  Walter Mischel,  a Stanford professor of psychology, conducted the experiment on campus at the Bing Nursery School in the late 1960’s.  In a small room with a desk and a chair, the children were taken individually and asked to select a treat from an assortment of goodies.  Most chose the marshmallow.  Then the experimenter told the children they could eat the one marshmallow right away, or they could wait until the experimenter left the room to run a small errand, and when they returned, the child would get not one, but two marshmallows.  If, while attempting to wait for the second marshmallow, the four-year-old decided he or she couldn’t wait any longer, they just had to ring a bell and the researcher would return to the room, allow the child to eat the one marshmallow, but the second marshmallow would be denied.

Video tape of the experiment is quite revealing.  Some children ate the marshmallow right away.  Some agonized over the marshmallow, hiding their eyes, playing with their hair, kicking at the desk, until finally ringing the bell and eating the one marshmallow.  Most of the children lasted 3 minutes before ringing the bell and succumbing to their temptation.  However, 30% of the children held out for the required 15 minutes, and received their second marshmallow.  They delayed their gratification, and it paid off.

Starting in 1981, Mischel went back to locate the 653 children used in his experiment.  The children were now in high school.  He sent questionnaires to their parents and teachers and requested their S.A.T. scores.  There was evidence that children who delayed their gratification, had less behavioral problems at home and in school, dealt with stress better, had better relationships, concentrated better, and had higher S.A.T. scores than those children who could not wait to eat their marshmallow.  A child that waited 15 minutes to eat their marshmallow, on average, had an S.A.T. score 210 points above the child who waited only 30 seconds before eating his marshmallow.

Mischel tracked the subjects into their late 30’s, and found that the four-year-olds with little self-control, grew up to be adults with little self-control.  They had significantly higher body-mass indexes and often had problems with drugs.  Mischel’s research continues, but his findings say something about choice and delaying gratification.

But just what does it say?  Only, that we should be cautioned about making choices for the short term at the expense of the long term.  That, while we seek the freedom to do what we want, the desire for immediate gratifications often makes us irrational about the long term.  Lung cancer doesn’t enter the mind of a smoker as the next cigarette is lit up; addiction seems irrelevant as the next drink is downed by the border-line alcoholic; a troubled marriage is a distant thought as a spouse looks lustfully into the eyes of a stranger.  Our world today offers us more pleasure than ever before in history.  Unfortunately, without a little self-control, these pleasures will become curses.

My Dad, Joe

Nestled beside Betty, his beloved wife of 63 years, Joe passed peacefully into the arms of God.  Here is the tribute I gave at his prayer service.

Tribute to Joe/Dad/Grandpa/Great-Grandpa

Hello everyone, my name is René Bol and on behalf of my mom and our entire family, I would like to sincerely thank you for being here tonight.

I’d first like to tell you a little bit about my father’s life. My father grew up poor during the Depression of the 1930’s, and he often entertained us with really funny stories about his childhood. He joked about the many hardships he had to endure, and while we always laughed with him, we couldn’t help but sense the sadness of a boy who was burdened by the realization he wasn’t going to be given much opportunity in life.

In the summers my Dad was sent off to work on the farms of his two uncles in Trochu, Alberta.  During the week, he and the other children would toil long hours working in the fields together, but when Sunday rolled around and the rest of the family packed up and went on their weekly summer picnic, my Dad was left behind to weed the garden, alone. It was pretty harsh treatment, and my Dad was pretty upset. But as my Dad tells the story, he was able to exact a small degree of revenge.  With a wink and a nod, he confessed to us that, “many a perfectly good carrot was also “accidently” yanked up and thrown away along with those miserable weeds.”

One summer, Dad was needed on the farms for a late harvest, so his uncles did not return him to Calgary in time for his schooling.  So for weeks he would have to drive the other children to their school in a horse and wagon, drop them off, go back to work on the farm all day, and then return to pick up the school children in his dirty, grimy, work clothes. You can just imagine the scene of a bunch of poor farm children making fun of their exceedingly more unfortunate, city-boy relative.  When the harshness of the winter set in, Dad’s uncles put him on the back of a flat-deck truck and returned him to Calgary.  Dad got back to the city, frozen, disheveled, and cloaked in dust and snow.   Stepping through his front door, his father took one look at him and then took him by the hand to buy him a brand new winter coat.  A coat both of them knew they couldn’t afford.
Recently, I asked my father how he ended up quitting school, just before his grade 9 exams. In a rare moment of seriousness he told me that his schoolmates had been teasing him, relentlessly, about his tattered shoes and clothes, and that he just couldn’t take it any longer.   So my father went down to Harry’s News and Tobacco to see if he could get a job. They offered him one, but only on the condition that he was able to first get a bicycle by Monday morning.   That wasn’t going to be an easy task.  But my Dad went to his father, who was working long hours, six days a week, struggling to feed a family of 9, and my Dad sheepishly asked for his help.   Instead of encouraging my father to stay in school, like you might expect from most parents, his father simply sighed, and told him that he would do his best to get him a bicycle - on credit.   He did, and my father never went back to school.

Later on when my father returned home from the war, the other veterans had their university educations paid for by the government but my father never qualified for the grant because he didn’t have his high school diploma.

When Dad was just a teenager, his father died young.   The family was understandably desperate, and jobs were scarce, so my father volunteered to go into the army, not so much out of a sense of duty to his country, but because the military promised to send his small monthly paycheck back home to his saintly, widowed mother. The war was to have a profound effect on Dad.  He saw evil, and death, and the worst of humanity up close, but he also saw bravery, and sacrifice and the bond between soldiers that would die for their country and for each other. Dad was to have a connection with the military for the rest of his life and in the last 15 or 20 years my Dad and Mom, and many of us here in the family, attended yearly reunions with his South Alberta Regiment.

I’m giving you a little bit of history about my father, not so much for posterity’s sake, but to give you some insight into what may have shaped my father’s character. He easily could have been an angry, mean-spirited, and selfish man.  But my Dad was the farthest thing possible from this.  He had an innate ability to transcend life’s challenges and injustices. He never dwelt on the bad side of anything and he always looked for something positive in everything.  We might think he had a rough childhood, but he saw it simply, as a fun-filled, testing ground that built independence, self-reliance, confidence and fortitude.  We might think his parents were sometimes neglectful, but he simply adored his mom and dad.   My Dad always had the wisdom to look past his own misfortune and understand the bigger picture.   For him, a brief special moment with his mom or dad would completely wipe out any thoughts of not being as fortunate as the other children. For him, his parents did their best in tough circumstances, and he loved them dearly for it.

My Dad never expected anything from anyone.   No sense of entitlement, no self-pity, no ego, no vanity, no complaining and never for a single moment in his life did he ever think he was better than anyone else.

From my Dad’s greatest struggle, he took his greatest prize.   Regrettably my Dad may have lost a small piece of his soul in the Second World War, but he returned from Europe with a beautiful Scottish war bride who gave him endless streams of happiness until his very last breath.

As I look back upon my father’s life, he appears to have been somewhat of a contradiction.
He had a great intellect but pursued little formal education.
He had a zest for adventure but became somewhat of a homebody.
He had a thirst for knowledge but rarely seemed to utilize this outside of helping his friends and family build or fix things.
He seemed to love the thrill of his own business and yet he settled for a long career, working loyally for someone else’s construction company.
He prospered over poverty and yet placed absolutely no value on material possessions.

My father, in fact, seemed to have the ability to do anything or become anything he wanted, but he let most of his worldly ambitions fade away.
A walking contradiction? Maybe so. But if you look closely enough at these contradictions, they share a common thread.  My Dad traded in the things he suspected would take him away from his loved ones, and he replaced them with things that would buy him more time. More time for building the deep, meaningful relationships he wanted with his wife, his family, his God and his friends.   My Dad understood something that most of us never do until it’s too late.  That we are all allotted only so much time here on earth, and that the time we spend with our loved ones will be our most precious.  My father chose to spend his time with us, and for that we are all eternally grateful.

Each and every one of us, have a uniquely intimate connection with my father and a long list of cherished memories with him. For us, this is our measure of how great of a man he was.  We thank God for his commitment to our lives, for his laughter, for his tenderness, for his generosity and compassion, for the mischievous sparkle in his eyes, and for his everlasting love.

Goodbye Dad.  Until we’re all together again.   One sweet day!

My nephew, Henry, also delivered a beautiful tribute for my father.  I’m publishing it without his permission - so sue me Henry!

There is a cottage that overlooks Ganges Harbour on Saltspring Island. The cottage is delicately nestled amongst giant cedar trees. It is a short walk to Ganges beach where, if you know which ones to turn over, you can flip over rocks and watch crabs scuttle for shelter. You would be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful location anywhere in the world. But even two decades ago, the cabin was a little rough around the edges. There were definitely mice, if not, possibly, rats. There was no dishwasher; and the basement had the sickly sweet smell of standing water on wood.

The most pressing problem to me, when we visited the Saltspring cabin when I was six years old, was that there wasn’t a television. But I was not worried about this problem for long. I knew that Grandpa Joe and Grandma Betty were coming out to visit. Grandpa had built model railroads, tree-houses, and toys of all description. Surely, I thought, Grandpa Joe would be able to build a television.

Even twenty years later I maintain that, given the chance and the right tools, Grandpa Joe could have built a television.

The word “hero” is a pretty strong word. It’s the sort of word you don’t use lightly. The Oxford dictionary defines “hero” as:

[A] person…who is admired for their courage or outstanding achievements

A hero could be a young man who enlists in the Canadian Infantry in the 1940s to fight against an army that had easily conquered the great powers of continental Europe. He would find himself sitting in the gunner’s seat of a Sherman tank; a tank that was a Ford-manufactured underdog, fighting Mercedes produced German machines.

Or a hero could be a man who returned to Canada, a veteran injured during combat, armed only with his determination, work ethic, and Betty (also lovingly known as “The War Department”). Grandpa Joe would build his first house from the ground up. And when he finally had to move, he would be able to do it easily; needing only “two trips in a wheelbarrow.”

A hero could also be a man who raised four compassionate, hard working, and good-humored children, all of whom would go on to be exceptional parents in their own right–Which is not to say that they didn’t present Grandpa Joe and Grandma Betty with challenges from time to time while they were growing up.

Of course, anyone who knows Grandpa Joe would know that he would be nothing short of mortally embarrassed if he found out he was being called a “hero”. And I like to think that he’s watching and listening down on us now, so, sorry Grandpa, you have to be embarrassed.

I think that the most heroic thing about Grandpa Joe was his quiet strength. How else can you explain spending hours and hours crafting a model railroad, complete with built from scratch wood structures, plaster mountains, and intricate wiring-and then letting your Grandchildren, and Great-Grandchildren, play with it.

It’s that quiet strength that made Grandpa’s passing all the more surprising. He seemed like he was just a little too determined in the way he lived his life to let death get a good grip on him.

In the summer of 2000, I remember working with Uncle Greg and Grandpa Joe building a fence and a shed. My dad told me that that I had better “not let Grandpa do too much of the hard work, because if you let him he’ll do it all.” Years later, when Uncle Joe and Uncle Greg were building their own houses, the problem was the same. Grandpa was incorrigible; he just couldn’t help himself, he had to contribute when there was work to be done.

I don’t know very much about hard work, sacrifice, determination, or power tools. But I think that a lot of what I do know about those things, I learned from Grandpa Joe. I feel incredibly lucky to have had him as a Grandfather. Grandpa Joe was a man whose example I attempt to follow in my own life.

And I do not think it is too bold for me to suggest that the world would be a significantly better place if there were more people like Grandpa Joe in it. I think we all know that there would be a lot more laughter, sincerity, kind heartedness, rum and cokes, and moral strength.

Grandpa Joe was one of the most beautiful people I have ever known. And I will remember him when I see great beauty; be it someone volunteering their time and effort for a noble cause, children learning and growing, or watching the sun set over Ganges harbor.